New NASA Web Site Launches Kids on Mission to Save Our Planet

Climate change can be a daunting topic for most adults to grasp, let alone kids. A new NASA Web site can help our future explorers and leaders understand how and why their planet is changing and what they can do to help keep it habitable.

Called "Climate Kids," the new Web site is the latest companion to NASA's award-winning Global Climate Change Web site, http://climate.nasa.gov. Geared toward students in grades 4 through 6, the multimedia-rich Climate Kids site uses age-appropriate language, games and humorous illustrations and animations to help break down the important issue of climate change. Climate Kids can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/kids.

Visitors to Climate Kids can:

• Command an interactive Climate Time Machine to travel back and forth through time and see how climate changes have affected our world or may affect it in the future.
• Choose the "greenest" transportation options in a game called "Go Green," or go on a "Wild Weather Adventure."
• Learn about green careers from people who are working to understand climate change.

"The climate our children inherit will be different from what we as adults know today," said Diane Fisher of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who developed the content for the site. "Climate Kids aims to answer some of the big questions about global climate change using simple, fun illustrations and language kids can relate to, helping them become better stewards of our fragile planet. Students will learn basic Earth science concepts such as what the difference is between weather and climate, how we know Earth's climate is changing and what the greenhouse effect is."

Climate Kids is a collaboration between JPL's Earth Science Communications Team and NASA's award-winning Space Place website, which is at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov.

NASA's Global Climate Change Web site is devoted to educating the public about Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. For more on NASA's Earth Science Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.